Coming Right Along...

We've been busy! The coop is almost finished. We have to plant the green roof on top and fill the bottom with wood chips. Oh...and we need some chickens. Other than that, we are pretty much done!!!

Here is the finished outside...the color looks a bit darker in person. Our options were limited. We bought the paint for $4 at the Habitat Re-Store...so we took what we could find.

Here you can see the perches which we made using some fallen branches from the woods behind our house. You can also see the feed and water containers and the ramp the chickens will use to get into the run.

We figured ventilation will be important once the coop is filled with chickens. It doesn't get as hot here in the summer as it does in Texas, but it still gets hot so this fold down window will help get some sun and air into the coop. You can also see the nesting boxes. There is a door above these for easy egg gathering.

We hooked a chain from the shed to the large door on the front so we can prop it open. 

We decided to make it a Texas coop for the North Carolina chickens. 

Speaking of Texas, we are headed that way on Monday!

Henry and I have had fun building the coop together but I have joked that next time I do pre-marital counseling, I am going to make them build a chicken coop and when they are done...if they can still communicate and still want to get married, we will go forward with it. Ha!

I hope you are all doing well. Grace and peace to you all. Love, Henry and Emily

A Catch Up Post...

Happy Easter! It has been a while and we have been BUSY!

Some really big news is that Henry got a job. Check out his bio here: Henry Job

He is enjoying the opportunity to be creative and work with great people. Another perk is that we have the same day off and similar schedules.

Here is a brief update of our recent adventures...in no particular order.

One of my congregation members offered to take my picture by our flower cross and Easter Lilies. I never think of such things and I am grateful for people who do. Holy Week and Easter was exhausting, but also very meaningful and wonderful. We had three services on Sunday and the men of the church made a pancake breakfast. It was a joyful and beautiful day.

We have been busy working away on the chicken coop. The chickens will come live with us Saturday, May 2nd if we are able to seal and paint by then. We have actually done more work since I took these pictures, but the coop has been covered for two days because of the rain so I haven't been able to update the pics. Here you can see the nesting boxes on the closest end and the hole in the bottom left will be where they exit to get into the run where they will stay during daylight hours. The door will fold down to be a ramp. It is very high tech. Ha!

Here is a better view of the nesting boxes. There will be a hinged roof for easy egg gathering.

And an updated shot of the chicken run complete with wire roof and door. We will be able to drag this around to different places in the yard so the chicken can dig up worms and eat grass and bugs.

Here is a side view. We are actually done with the large ice chest looking door and the roof of the nesting boxes. We will paint it with exterior paint that we are planning to buy for REALLY cheap at the Habitat Re-Store which is conveniently located in downtown Matthews. The roof will be a "green roof" and we will grow ground cover plants on it that we will be able to feed to the chickens.

Here are our potatoes. We learned about this at our local hardware store which happens to be the coolest hardware store ever and has been in Matthews over 100 years. We have planted four varieties. You plant them, cover them with dirt, compost and leaves (really whatever you have) and once the plants grow to be about a foot tall, you cover them again. At the end of the season, when the plants die, you undo the wire bin and are the proud new owners of more potatoes that you could ever eat. We will figure out something to do with them. 

Here is the new use for our Texas license plates. We already have a family of blue birds living in here. I only looked once, because I didn't want to scare them, but this birdhouse is right in front of the cats' perch and they love to watch them come and go.

Our newest addition to the garden is two heirloom tomato plants. We got them planted last Saturday after the opening day of the Farmer's Market! There was a lot of excitement at the market and some great new sellers. Here you can see Henry thrilled with me for telling him to pause mid air. His shoulder, by the way, is doing GREAT. For those of you that don't know, he had surgery less than two weeks ago and is healing well.

Here is an update of our boxes. These are the lower boxes with onions in the front and brussels sprouts in the back. We had to turn them around so the onions are now in the back because the onions were growing like crazy and shading out the Brussels sprouts.

And an update on our larger boxes. The large pot on the left has a blackberry bush in it. The box has sugar snap peas in the back, two varieties of lettuce (romaine and butter), carrots on the left and spinach on the right in the front. There is another box like this on the other side of the front door and another variety of blackberries. We have already been able to eat lettuce and spinach. I can't wait to try a carrot. They are a sweet, short and stubby variety.

We are still trying to take advantage of all of the great local hiking. Here we are at Reedy Creek Nature Preserve. They are about to build a natural play area and Henry has been attending some planning meetings. Exciting stuff and a beautiful place. I was being silly here...

And a better one...

We are heading to Texas in LESS than a week and we are both very excited to be back after being away for six months straight! We hope you are all doing well. I will try to be better about posting, but life is busy and that is a good thing.

Happy Easter and Lots of Love!

Emily and Henry

YIKES!

I knew I was a bad blogger, but two months is sad. A lot has happened and I am not prepared to write it all out now, but in a nutshell: We are doing well...happy and healthy. Henry got a job! Holy Week starts tomorrow. The chicken coop is coming along. The farmer's market starts up again next week. We are headed to Texas at the end of the month. (Yea!) Life is good. Our veggies are doing great in our boxes out front. Henry is quite the wood worker and has made another bird house and a bat house! We've gotten a lot of rain and the pollen here is ridiculous. More soon...we'll add pictures, too. Peace. Em and Hen.

Chicken Run and Spring Crop...

We have had a gorgeous day and have been busy outside. 

Here is the beginning of our chicken coop and run. The run still needs a top and the coop only has a floor. The coop is the house part, totally enclosed, where the chickens sleep at night and lay their eggs. The run is where they hang out during the day to get some sun and scrounge for whatever they can find in the grass/dirt....

...like giant worms such as these which we found in the dirt and moved to our garden.

Here is Henry with his recently turned compost. We were hoping the compost would be done for this Spring planting, but it is still cooking, so we had to buy some this round.

Here I am standing on the floor of the coop. It will be 8Ft by 4ft. The Matthews rules state that each chicken has to have 4sq. ft. of floor space. Our chickens will have 8 sq. ft each. Spoiled chickens!

This is me inside the run. The only piece of wood we bought for this project so far was the floor of the coop. We have enough to frame out the coop, but will have to buy more wood for the walls and roof.

Here is Henry with one of our square foot gardening boxes that we put in the front. These little ones have brussel sprouts and onions.

Here you sort of get an idea of what it looks like. We put two larger square foot gardening boxes on the porch and two smaller ones in front. The ones on the porch have sugar snap peas, two varieties of lettuce, carrots and spinach. So I guess we are growing a salad on the porch.

A top view of one of the smaller boxes. You can just barely see the onions up front.

The twine is for the sugar snap peas to grow on. We thought we were pretty clever with these.

And here we are soaking the seeds. One of the books said it helps to give them a boost in getting ready to grow. I guess we'll see!

Hope you have had a wonderful day, too! Peace! Emily and Henry

More snow....

More pictures of the snow! It is already mostly melted, but it was fun while it lasted.

Henry made this snowman for Carson.  He watched out over things all day.

This is a sign in front of our local hardware store. I think they made some good money on sleds today.

Our house looking cold.

It is fun snow...very fluffy...I think this looks like cotton.

The bug looking chilly...

Love, Em

SNOW!!!

I know we are terrible bloggers,  but the last few weeks have been VERY busy.

I suppose I just needed a SNOW day to catch up!!!

Here is what I saw when I looked out the back door...

And the view out the front...

Judging by the railing on our porch, it looks like about 2 inches, but it is still snowing and will most of today!

Fun, fun! 

Peace, Emily

A fun New Years...

We decided that we would really love to be with friends for New Years, so we called Laura and Ryan Jensen...friends from seminary... to see if we could invite ourselves down for a visit. They agreed and we had a fantastic time. We bundled up on New Years Eve and went downtown to see what all the buzz about the Moon Pie over Mobile was all about. It wasn't amazing, but it did cause buzz for the city so that is good.

This is especially funny because I really don't like moon pies at all! Apparently they throw them from floats at Mardi Gras in Mobile.

That dot in the middle is the moon pie. I think it said 2009 when it hit midnight.

The Jensens in awe of the lit up moon pie.

On New Years Day we made a feast of fried shrimp and fried oyster po boys. I use the term "we" loosely as Ryan did almost all of the cooking. I'm not sure why I was even standing by the oven to be honest. He also made fried pickles and Laura made homemade cole slaw. It was all delicious!

Happy New Year to you all... a special hello to my family who are all in Sante Fe for an exciting celebration. Lots of love to Jenny and Elizabeth! Peace, Emily