Day 322

With winter on the horizon, the process of winterizing the farm is underway. Besides turning off the water to the outdoor bibs and bringing in toys and tools from outside and setting them up for barn storage, we are hoping to take time to work on some projects that have been pushed to the wayside.

While we originally wanted to take the windows we took out of the kitchen and put them in the barn to bring more natural light for the chickens, our carpenter friend steered us in a different direction. Not wanting to disrupt the barn’s structural integrity, he mentioned possibly creating something similar to sunroof in the ceiling of the stalls. While intriguing, we would need to do some major reconfiguring and wood replacing if that idea were to come to life.

With our growing collection of scrap wood ready to be repurposed, we also had other ideas that are much more exciting. Winter work in the barn is an option I’d like to dig into. I’ve been looking to build on my novice woodworking skills and piece together a mud kitchen for the kids. Now that windows might need to be used differently than we originally intended, our mud kitchen idea might be expanded. We have plenty of pallets to serve as a base plus old countertops, cabinet drawers, and sinks to bring a place where kids can discover and play in a more meaningful way to our backyard.

I also want to build a more fortified and organized compost area in the backyard. We have plenty of space. At this point, we used some of the old fence posts that were stool standing and lined stumps and smaller logs on the ground to build a rectangular area with a front opening. This quickly filled and overflowed with a healthy mix of wood shavings and chicken compost. While  we are able to use some of the mix with our own garden and even give some away, we will need a bigger space to keep all the garden gold contained, especially with neighbors on the way. Regardless of what we do with this area, the chickens will continue to make garden gold.