Doin's at our place

It seems that Mother Nature has enjoyed fretting me at every turn the past few weeks.  I have only managed to get about one half of the gardens in because if we have not been having storms we have been having tornadoes and if we haven't been having tornadoes we've been having hail and...you get the picture.  All has not been lost as in spite of having weather I have managed to get new berry bushes in, lettuce, spinach, leeks, basil, strawberries, and tomatoes in the ground.  Still a good bit to go, but tis nice to at least have that much done.  I also managed to get my 30 chicks out of the brooder and in a temporary enclosure outside.  Temporary because 23 of them are meat birds and I'm not building an entire coop for critters that will only be with a us a short time.  I built a lean-to against our out building.  I must say, it has worked quite well even through the storms and tornadic weather.

Simple and basic, yes.  But that is generally the way I do things and more often than not things work out to my favor.  It's not shown in the picture but the whole thing is covered in bird netting.  The lean to is covered in 4 layers of tarps.  The dog house, which was sitting around not being used, is a second choice for shelter and where we put their food when it rains. 

A third choice for shelter is my old composter.  I heartily dislike this thing as a composter.  Will never use it as one again.  But it works great with some hay and chickens in it.  This chicken run is not as much of a fortress as I have for my laying flock but in our area we have been blessed with a minimal amount of predators that are interested in chickens.  To date, we have had no issues at all.  We will be building a chicken tractor shortly for the 6 easter eggers and 1 dominique in this group and will pull them out to live in it.  Then the only thing left is to let the meat birds age and fatten up at bit.  As far as meat birds go, they are happy.  I did, after all, promise them only one bad day in their life.  Sounds a pretty good deal to me - we certainly don't get only one bad day!

So now, if I can only manage to get Mother Nature to stop dumping bucket of water atop my head and blowing twisters my way - I'll get the rest of the garden in!