Today was about being crofters 🙂 Now we are official it felt even more right to be spending the day on our land. We listened to Popmaster and then headed to the croft to start making a chicken coop. We didn’t have much of a plan really although we’d been inspired by our John Seymour book to try something with branches and feed bags (or in our case black plastic sheeting which we happened to have with us) so went on a bit of a forage to see what we could find. We uncovered various bits of old fence posts, gates and other scrap wood from around our own croft and the neighbouring field and paths, all abandoned, no use to anyone stuff. After some debate and head scratching we came up with a design plan, much changed as we went along but ending up with two ends made of two posts attached together with a rock tent peg, we braced that with a long stick across the top and then two side braces lower down. We dug some holes to sink the posts into and have knocked some pegs in around each leg to steady it further. We then formed a base about half way up so the chickens can go up into it to roost (no issue with foxes here and although techinically birds of prey or even otters could predate chickens it is more the rats that will pose a problem so having them off the ground should help with that.
We broke for lunch and to meet the 2pm ferry which we were hoping would be laden with stuff for us – and it was! In the post came our 3in1oil for the static door, a stapler (no staples though – d’oh!), as parcels came walking boots for Ady, Scarlett and I, a whiteboard / noticeboard for me, trugs for the croft (animal feed, water, general carting about of stuff including compostable waste), a book for Davies and a funnel for Ady. Most importantly though our food shopping came from the CoOp! 🙂 So roast chicken tonight, lasagne tomorrow and toad in the hole on Sunday along with chocolate supplies and pizza toppings – hurrah! Our diesel didn’t arrive though so our planned trip to Harris on Sunday to beach comb and see more of the island won’t be happening as we’re down to a quarter of a tank. We rang the petrol station back on the mainland to chase it and learnt they are short staffed so there is a hold up. Argh! Another learning curve, don’t wait until you’re almost out to reorder. We helped load the shop delivery on to a different van and then came back via filling our water containers to the croft.
This afternoon was less productive in terms of out put but still very busy with the chicken coop. I am still cherishing an idea of looking more rustic and organic but realistically we need to just get it waterproof. We’ve had some more ideas this evening though and it will definitely be finished tomorrow before the chickens arrive. Hopefully we’ll make a duck one on a smaller basis too. Fencing arrives sometime next week but until then they will totally freerange with fingers crossed we don’t lose any.
We called time at 630pm and came back to put the roast chicken in the oven and head down to the shop to see if anyone was out. Nobody was so we did a bit of shopping and came back home. After I got the comment on here about calling the static ‘home’ I was also picked up on it by Norman here so from now on I’ll be calling it home 🙂
😀
Comment by Em — 06 May 2012 @ 7:43 am