Welcome to your new home, Cockamamy brood!

Ben has renovated the Mantainer to create a full-on indoor-outdoor romper room for our egg-laying ladies and their gentleman caller. It is such a sweet pad! And although it has taken a while for our ladies to warm up to the place, they are settling in and making it their home.

Here’s a little tour of Ben’s handiwork. Go ahead, gush. He deserves the praise! Lay it on him!

The door to the coop is a vintage office door rescued from a downtown building Ben’s parents once owned. His sense of humor shows in selecting this one to mark the threshold of the hen house.

Inside, Ben crafted roosts from branches he has cut down on our property. The floor is covered in pine shavings.

The wall opposite the roost has the nesting boxes hanging on the wall—this is the same vintage metal unit Ben gifted me for Christmas when we were still homestead hunting. It has been our nesting boxes since before we had birds.

The opening down low is the doorway to the outdoor play pen.

The chickens are enjoying their new, fenced area, accessible directly from the new coop. In addition to fencing the yard, we installed netting across the top to keep any predators out (and to help keep any strong-willed (and strong-winged) birds in.

This adorable little lady (really yet to be determined but she’s so sweet she surely can’t be a surly rooster!) is the latest addition to our brood. Marigold, above, and her sister Daisy came to us via a friend whose daughter was given the two chicks as a gift. Once the sweet little babies grew, got feathers, and needed to a farm to call home, Cockamamy adopted them.  The big girls are treating them kindly and although I think they miss the constant human interaction they’ve been raised with, they are finding their place.

We have not given up on having free range chickens—will continue to have them be free birds, letting them graze on their own around the property. But during this time of getting the garden up and going, it’s best for them (and for Ben’s sanity) to be in the fenced yard.

So for the time being, Milly and the puppies (now 1 year old!) are Ben’s garden helpers.