Good Productive Day

I am always grateful for each morning I wake up and can walk upright without too much pain.  I just turned 63 so I have the usual problems that come with age, arthritis, back pain, stiffness, you get it if you are over fifty.  I didn’t really want to go out and muck chicken coops today, but we have storms coming and a blast of winter temperatures hitting tonight and several days of cold.  My body does not like temperatures below about 45, I have screws and wire in both feet too and I can feel exactly where they are and it hurts.  So, I decided today would be a great day to muck out coops!  I would much rather work outside when it is in the 60’s than in the 30’s or low 40’s…especially if it is damp outside.

I have never seen any kind of tool that was specifically for mucking out chicken coops.  However, I really like using a digging fork and a commercial roof scraper.  I use the roof scraper on the wooden floors or to scrape a layer of muck off of the sandy soil we have.  It has a long handle and a slightly bent shovel like blade almost a foot wide.  I also use metal putty knifes and taping blades for flat roosts and some walls, plastic putty knives for some plastic nest boxes.  I am pretty good at figuring out good tools to use for the particular dirty jobs.  Long handle stiff brushes for dish type waterers and long handled car wash brushes for plastic 3 to 5 gallon waterers…the soft brushes get in the grooves a bit better.

Today my tools of choice were varied, I had a muck bucket, a big garden cart, my brushes and net covered sponge, my wide blade putty knife, my scraper, my digging fork and my rubber coated gloves…I started with the duck house.  The duck coop has a dirt bottom, if there is enough straw or wood shavings, it usually is not too awful to remove all of the spent bedding…it is dryer under the top layer, so it basically scoops up fairly easy.  If it hasn’t rained a lot, it usually doesn’t smell bad either.  It was unusual today, I didn’t have chicken and turkey helpers…but that may be because I let the dogs run the yard and they would periodically come check on me.  I did have to holler at the youngest several times, she likes to chase chickens and jump in the duck pools.  I like them running around the large open area, it wears them out and they will nap when we go inside.  I dug down to fresh dirt in the duck coop, then spread a bundle of pine shavings on it.  Normally I use straw, I had straw…but the chickens will go in and scratch around in there so much, the kick a good part of it out…not so much with pine shavings.  The straw has some wheat left in it, the pine doesn’t have that.  I felt pretty good after getting that one mucked out, went and dumped the garden cart and went to the breeding pens next.

The coop section in the breeding pens is pressure treated plywood, I don’t normally put straw in it unless it rains a lot or it stays cold for longer than a couple of days.  The chickens just sleep on roosts above the floor…it gets nasty quick sometimes.  The commercial roof scraper works well in this area, I have to use the muck bucket in this coop…and then carry it to dump. There are actually four sections, four feet by four feet square…but all connected, if that makes since?  I did divide the coops intending to divide the run, but never have completed it.  The run is divided into two sections though, so I could separate two breeds in it.  The plan was to make 8 sections total for breeding purposes, but things changed and I had to use materials differently than originally planned.  There were going to be 8 doors too…but the structure is half the size originally planned.  The run has a metal roof, all of my coops runs are covered in metal now…I had polycarbonate on them, but after some huge hail punching holes in it, a change had to be made.

I don’t know why I am telling you this, I guess because things evolved and mistakes had to be fixed over the years. If you get into chickens maybe, it will help you decide how to build things or something.

I just really got in my groove today and got a lot done in the cleaning department.  We call our coops different names, so we know the locations and what coop it is.  My chicken yard is divided up by different fenced areas too.  I try and clean three coops in a day when I clean, I don’t always get all three, because some days things don’t go as planned.  Today I did four and moved dirt too!  I know I will probably feel it tomorrow.  But today was a good day.  

I still have repairs to make, but that will have to wait a bit longer.

Last Bathroom Floor is Done!

I think we did pretty well getting the bathrooms in this house fixed up.  They aren’t perfect, but we learned and did them all ourselves, with the exception of having some help in the beginning.  We had to fix several plumbing issues that he did, pipes started leaking in the wall, so with the help of push to fit connectors my husband got the plumbing repaired.  It was left to me for the most part, to do the sheetrock and repairs, he textured some then I finished texturing and painted.  I am not really familiar with plumbing other than faucet change outs and my husband did that for me this time.  We managed to remodel two bathrooms in one year!  Lol, eventually we will need a new vanity and tub in the guest bath, but it isn’t used that much so it may be awhile for that much of a renovation.  I ripped up the stained vinyl flooring, scraped and cleaned the floor, patched the walls and did fresh paint and then laid tile, oh and painted baseboards and put them back on.  It looks much better than it did.  I bought a plug-in light for over the sink so you could see to shave or put on makeup, but we put up a new overhead light when we first moved in, the fixture was awful and only had a single light and it was rather dark.  One of these days I might hire an electrician to actually wire for a light over the sink.  Maybe when we replace the bathtub and vanity…or I will learn how to run electrical wires and add a switch.  My husband can do it, he just doesn’t like going into the attic, especially when it is hot out.  We renovated the office bathroom about this time last year and the master bath about a year before that (I need to fix the shower floor still though…maybe I will do that soon.

This time of year is the best for me to do outside projects, but I have been working inside mostly.  Put different shelving in my small pantry and decided to start the changeover from what we previously used as “the kitty room” to a walk-in pantry.  I cleared it out, moved the cats to the non-carpeted guest room and got to work.  I am not completely done, but all four walls have shelving now.  I took a bunch of small appliances off my counters and put them in the “new” pantry, and actually have all my canning jars, implements and canners in one spot…I think?  I am just finally trying to get better organized.  I took some shelves out of that room and actually added them to my closet.  So I have several projects going at once really.  I need to get things done before spring and gardening season.

I want to get started on my kitchen island build and greenhouse too.  But, I need to do some chicken coop repairs too.  I need to prioritize things and some things just have to be pushed to the back burner at times, so other things can be done that are more important.  Housing animals verses building an island?  Well, animals are first on that one.  I keep swearing I will get the greenhouse built…who knows when it will really happen?

Lol…guess what?  After being here in the country for 9 years, we finally invited someone to dinner!  I would have preferred to have everything neat and orderly before we did it.  But the sky didn’t fall and at least when they used the guest bath, it didn’t look like someone peed on the floor anymore!