First there was the drawing.

This is how all my projects start. No, actually they start with reading something or talking to Jess* about a need. This one started with the fact that the kids don’t like to eat duck eggs if they can recognize them (scrambled or as part of a recipe? Fine), and that the ducks don’t lay eggs in the winter. Then an email from a lady at work who was giving away her laying hends. Then another conversation or 12 with Jess.

Then came this drawing. Plus another bunch on the previous pages of my “Brain,” the notebook wherein to make various notes & sundry sketches. (Computer geeks take note: Nobody has yet made a machine that beats a notebook and a pen. Consider yourself challenged.) This design is as dirt-cheap as I could make a home for four fat hens. We had the cinder blocks, steel roofing pieces, and scrap lumber. So on Saturday I pulled the drawing into the third dimension.

Three of the walls are cut from a single 4×8 sheet of T-111. Never use this for a chicken coop: it was !!$34!! For one sheet! (I did not recognize my error until it was already cut.) Use 5/16″ OSB instead and save yourself $28. Just make sure you paint it. The back wall is shared with the shoop, and the floor is scrap OSB. The roof lifts up on hinges to reveal the nesting boxes, which you can just make out in the drawing. This makes for easy egg collection, if chickens are as methodical as ducks. The “roost” is a dead sapling which was thick and straight enough to make the cut, pun intended.

Here I am with my lovely assistant Natalie (daughter 4). It looks like I have a paunch but that’s just my high-quality tool belt pulling my sweatshirt down. I still have to install the vents and a light bulb, but everything else is in, including the hens. That happened last night after dark. Pictures soon, hopefully.

*After reading other blogs I’ve decided there’s no harm in naming my family. But Jessica really is Beautiful!