How I Survived My Chicken Coop Folly

Not much but the grass is turning green and it makes me happy

This week we have been busy getting our little homestead ready to sell. We have been trying to make our rather weather-beaten little animal tractors and hutches look more charming and less like wrecked heaps all over the lawn. The ice and snow have melted and we were finally able to move the animals around and spread them out so that only two are visible in the corner of the front lawn/field.

The pregnant Doe, Floppsy has been relocated to near the wood shelter and she has been gleefully digging for days. Every evening I go out to feed and water her and thwart her digging advancements by placing large rocks in the holes she has dug to escape.


The Buck, Jack, is beside the house but we will move him to the back yard as soon as we get rid of the big pile of brush we cut down and placed there last fall. The other Doe, Jill and all of her babies are in two tractors on the front lawn and are currently running and sproinging straight up and generally being very cute and busy. As the grass turns from brown to green, I have been feeding it to the bunnies.

What a difference two weeks makes. Instead of snow there is green grass!

I have begun fortifying my garden beds as they seem to have lost a lot of soil this winter. I  uncovered the compost, peeled back the top layers, and no, I don't stir compost because I get good compost easily because of all of the animal poo and I am way too lazy to stir compost. There is precious, gold underneath in the form of decayed poo, straw and vegetable matter. I loaded that into big buckets and sprinkled a little around the Rhubarb patch which has never really done very well but is budding. I added some to my bean tee-pee garden and planted some greens until it is warm enough to plant the beans.

Everywhere I look, there are signs of spring. The apple trees are budding, the Rhubarb is up, I even welcome the weeds back just because they are the first things to green!

Little Rhubarb buds

Tiger Lillies

Next I peeled back the aged, thick, chicken and rabbit manure mixed with bedding, from a garden bed I haven't used in the last couple of seasons. I stuck my shovel in and it came out with the most beautiful, perfect soil. Light and fluffy but when you squeezed it, it stuck together loosely. I stood there amazed. I almost teared up because normally under the top layer of grass in my yard, you hit rock and after you dig the rocks out (granite boulders often too big to dig up spanning four feet across) you hit deadpan. I have been digging up rocks and  adding any kind of organic matter I can get my hands on but it can take time to turn lawn covered back-fill into a garden. Evidently it takes four years.

I grabbed shovelful after shovelful of the beautiful new, rich, soil and put some around my sage bush, my hedges, and my thyme plants, all of which my chickens had dust bathed around, exposing the plant's root balls. I gleefully shovelled a few buckets full into what will be my tomato garden. When I was done, I simply back filled the hole I had dug with more soiled chicken and rabbit bedding.

I don't even care that we may be moving and I won't  regret having fertilized and repaired the soil on what could be someone else's land. On the contrary I think it is my duty to leave the soil better off than when I found it and to act as a steward of the land. Perhaps some other hack gardener, like myself, with have a bit easier time and will feel encouraged to keep planting. If no one plants here, than the soil can just keep repairing itself and growing whatever seeds float onto it and allow the microbes and bugs to live in it and flourish because I jump started the soil.  I feel great joy over this idea!